JP Morgan: Ultrabooks unlikely to drive PC growth in 2012

A new analysis from investment bank J.P. Morgan says Windows-based ultrabooks are unlikely to achieve similar success as Apple's MacBook Air in their first generation and will not become "meaningful enough" to drive growth in the notebook PC market until at least 2013.

Analyst Mike Moskowitz issued a "Quick Thoughts" note to investors on Tuesday calling ultrabooks "just more of the same in PCs." He viewed the new category of laptops as drawing heavily on Apple's design cues from the MacBook Air, which first arrived in 2008.

"It seems that everyone wants to be like Apple," he said. "All of this market emulation of Apple is ironic, in our view, given the initial skepticism that the MacBook Air received."

Intel introduced the ultrabook design specification last May at the Computex trade show. The chipmaker set an optimistic goal of reaching a 40 percent share of the consumer laptop market by the end of this year.

The analyst voiced skepticism that Intel will manage to reach that goal. He did, however, point out that, technically, the MacBook Air meets the requirements for an ultrabook. "Given the MacBook Air’s success, this dynamic may be leading to Intel’s somewhat optimistic view of the Ultrabook adoption rate," he wrote.

The major obstacles that Moskowitz sees for ultrabooks in the near- to mid-term are price points, lengthening PC replacement cycles and increased competition from smartphones and tablets for IT dollars. According to him, customers who pass up the MacBook Air will be looking for "meaningful discounts" on Windows-based ultrabooks. Those discounts, however, appear to have been deferred until the next generation of ultrabooks arrive late this year and in 2013.

Taiwan's DigiTimes reported on Tuesday that ultrabook prices will likely drop 20 to 30 percent in early March to April ahead of the release of Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge platform in April.

On a slightly positive note, the analyst's research indicated that PC makers have not built up a large stockpile so the likelihood of a "supply chain bubble" is low. Reports from late last year suggested that ultrabook makers were slashing production of the devices after early sales proved "unsatisfactory."

Moskowitz attributed some of the decline in PC sales to a focus by vendors on price takedowns rather than technology advancements. Apple, however, bucked the trend by continuing to innovate "with an acute focus on the user experience, targeting both feature and form factor differentiation," the analyst noted.

The Average Selling Price of consumer notebooks has declined in recent years. | Source: Gartner and J.P. Morgan

"Given this market disparity, we believe that Intel is trying to breathe new life into the PC industry by adopting a page from Apple’s playbook: push a feature-rich, easy-to-use mobile product family that competes on more than just price," he said.

However, J.P. Morgan is doubtful that Intel's efforts will take. Moskowitz characterized Apple's MacBook Air as a one-of-a-kind success story that was highly unlikely to transfer to ultrabooks.

"We do not believe Ultrabooks can jumpstart the growth trajectory of the notebook PC market in 2012," he said. "The MacBook Air form factor has been a success for Apple, but we are skeptical that similar success can be replicated by Windows-based Ultrabooks in the first generation."

The analyst went on to compare the 2012 ultrabook situation to last year's tablet push: "a lot of sell-in from Apple look- alikes but with little sell through."

Intel reportedly expects more than 75 different ultrabooks to be introduced this year. In Moskowitz's view, the high number of unique, but barely differentiated, models could "overwhelm or confuse potential customers."

Moskowitz noted that the MacBook Air saw a 69.3 percent three-year compound annual growth rate through the third quarter of 2011. By comparison, the total notebook PC market had a CAGR of 15.8 percent during the same period.

Apple's MacBook Air achieved impressive sales growth after the company and introduced an 11-inch model in 2010. An update last July added the Thunderbolt I/O and a significant boost in speed by way of Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs. According to one estimate, the thin-and-light notebook made up 28 percent of Apple's notebook sales last October, compared to just 8 percent in June 2011.

The analyst said he doesn't see ultrabooks posing much of a threat to the MacBook Air until their pricing falls below $800 since Apple has the benefit of first-mover advantage, optimized feature set and form factor. He expects the number of ultrabook models to "double or triple" in the second half of 2012 and simultaneously dismissed the new laptops as "noise" that will not affect the MacBook Air's "accelerating growth dynamics."

I'd like to see where Apple ranks in profits for the PC industry and for unit marketshare over $1000. I bet it's higher than the previous measure. Those netbooks really killed the PC market not only in their ability to turn a rofit but also consumer faith in those other PC vendors.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Some of those people have no shame. Once again, Apple innovates, and then a bunch of other no talent people blatantly copy Apple's designs.

Who in their right mind would spend their precious money on some pathetic looking knockoff when they can get the original for a pretty cheap price? And to top it all off, they get the amazing and great OS X with it. Hell, if somebody wants to, they can even install Windows on their Mac, and have both OSes on their Mac, not that I would ever install Windows on any of my machines of course.

And those no talent PC makers are finding out that it's not that easy to deliver on the price points that they were initially hoping for. It turns out that the Macbook Air is priced to be very affordable. Would somebody rather buy an original painting by Picasso or a painting by some drunken bum sitting on a street corner who copied one of Picasso's paintings if they both were similarly priced?

If I ever saw anybody with one of those ultrabooks that looks like a Macbook Air ripoff, then I'd instantly know that that person has no taste, no style and no clue. I'd also question their overall intelligence and their decision making ability.

The PC makers spent so much time devaluing "PC" to mean nothing more than "cheap". I don't see them ever recovering from that. The reality now is that people who care about design, ease of use, and good service are by definition Mac users while people who care about dollars per GHz are PC users.

I don't know if the above post is revisionist history or not, but I thought that the MacBook Air wasn't a sales success until the late 2010 models came out (the redesigned model which saw the introduction of the 11" MBA). Before then, it was pretty much a flop by all accounts.

My wife has a 2009 MacBook Air (128GB) and it runs hot and the battery life is atrocious. I had a 2010 13" MacBook Air (128GB) and its battery life easily doubled hers. I now currently have a 2011 MacBook Air (128GB) and am loving it.

I don't know if the above post is revisionist history or not, but I thought that the MacBook Air wasn't a sales success until the late 2010 models came out (the redesigned model which saw the introduction of the 11" MBA). Before then, it was pretty much a flop by all accounts.

it was not a flop. it was pretty in line with others macbook, but the ssd option was not often purchased

it changed with the ssd macbook air, yes, that was a success, the mba took over the macbook and ssd was viable for consumers.

The PC vendors, except Apple, all raced to the bottom by cutting quality along with price, and as a result also cut profits.

Intel sees the trend of ARM moving in to capture the low end, which is now dominated by cheap POs, oops I mean PCs.

Intel introduces the "ultrabook" concept to try and force the PC manufacturers to emulate the Apple model and start to offer quality and innovative computers.

The PC manufacturers of course then do all that they know how to do, they copy Apple's looks but cut quality along with price, and as a result also cut profits with slimmer and lighter POs, oops I mean PCs.

What Intel failed to realize is that the only way that the remaining PC vendors, except Apple, know how to compete is on price, and the majority of people who are willing to buy a Wintel machine only really care about price.

This is an exercise in futility. Intel should have been more than happy to sell their chips to Apple at the high end of the market and their chips to everyone else at the low end instead of wasting everyone's time and money trying for this fool's gambit. I mean I could see this if Apple weren't using Intel processors, but what did Intel think it was going to gain by antagonizing Apple by trying to turn the entire PC industry against them by trying to force the entire PC industry to copy their products?

If I were Apple I would be more than a little pissed about this move. Maybe enough to dump a few billion into AMD to see about having them supply a chip competitive to Intel's chip for future products. Or perhaps to start working with Nvidia about seeing where this whole high performance ARM processor thing is going.

Really, I don't see what Intel was hoping to gain by doing this other than pissing off Apple and pushing them towards someone else.

Intel makes CPU/Motherboard/ and a bit more things in Ultrabooks.
They do the same things for Apple in Macbook Air.

So why is Intel subsidization some customers with hundreds of millions of dollars when they only combat Apple who also uses Intel stuff?

The only logical reason is that Intel knows that Apple will switch to ARM someday. And Apple should do it. The integrated platform makes it possible for Apple to have same/better performence on ARM then Intel.

Intel have to use brute force approach since its a fragmented platform. Apple can use SIMD/ALTIVEC and GPU acceleration since they know that every single A4 and onward have NOVA SIMD. Apple do even custom design its A class SoCs to include extra stuff that Apple wants. Intel would never do that.

Intel spending over 300 million on combatting Apple just shows how desperate they are. I also think its illigal to subsidize just some customers. Why doesn't Apple get some Intel money?

The first Macbook Air is from when the Intel and Apple relationship still was good. Intel designed a special smaller CPU just for the original Macbook Air. This created this whole market making billions for both Intel and Apple.

To bad that Intel and Apples relationship have gone bad and that Intel now tries to punish Apple by subsidizing other PC vendors.

It will be a great day when we stop play with X86 and move back to RISC. With universal binaries Apple could have continued to support both PPC and Intel. A PowerMac with IBM Power7 processors are in a totally different performance class then playX86 platform. Or why not use the 128 thread SPARC stuff.

While all what you mob are saying is basically true it isn't cool to gloat or rub it in.

The companies we are talking about, they pay people. The issue isn't that they raced to the bottom and now copy apple. It is that they have destroyed their owners wallets and ultimately are going to have to fire people.

Apple can't keep the tech economy afloat, it won't hire all the people who lose their jobs.

Some people remember with sadness the pathetic mismanagement that destroyed Commodore. They had great products but derailed them. The current situation is an on mass version of same.

HP was renowned for quality, dell had a great business model, IBM made great workhorses. So much for all that.

This situation reminds me of the great workstation collapse, Apollo, DEC, SGI, Sun and more. All crushed under the force of the increasing ability and lower price of Windows boxes. Now the same thing is happening to the PC market (which I consider to have evolved into the workstation market).

None of that loss was cool and nothing to be proud about, it was bad management in the face of change. More so, not recognizing change until too late to be able to change.

It is not Apple that is breaking all these companies, it is themselves, the people that run them. To have failed to recognize that the performance curve had exceeded the majority of tasks, that computing was moving to the real mass market, that it has shifted from computer user to professional to consumer.

You might sell a box to a content creator, but you won't sell 1000 boxes to view that content on.

Anyway, perhaps we could skip waving the Apple flag while laughing and just recognize a lot of people work for companies that won't be able to pay them and that they didn't change with the time..

If you see an ex HP employee on the street asking for a job to feed their family. Give them a hand.

The PC vendors, except Apple, all raced to the bottom by cutting quality along with price, and as a result also cut profits.

Intel sees the trend of ARM moving in to capture the low end, which is now dominated by cheap POs, oops I mean PCs.

Intel introduces the "ultrabook" concept to try and force the PC manufacturers to emulate the Apple model and start to offer quality and innovative computers.

The PC manufacturers of course then do all that they know how to do, they copy Apple's looks but cut quality along with price, and as a result also cut profits with slimmer and lighter POs, oops I mean PCs.

What Intel failed to realize is that the only way that the remaining PC vendors, except Apple, know how to compete is on price, and the majority of people who are willing to buy a Wintel machine only really care about price.

This is an exercise in futility. Intel should have been more than happy to sell their chips to Apple at the high end of the market and their chips to everyone else at the low end instead of wasting everyone's time and money trying for this fool's gambit. I mean I could see this if Apple weren't using Intel processors, but what did Intel think it was going to gain by antagonizing Apple by trying to turn the entire PC industry against them by trying to force the entire PC industry to copy their products?

If I were Apple I would be more than a little pissed about this move. Maybe enough to dump a few billion into AMD to see about having them supply a chip competitive to Intel's chip for future products. Or perhaps to start working with Nvidia about seeing where this whole high performance ARM processor thing is going.

Really, I don't see what Intel was hoping to gain by doing this other than pissing off Apple and pushing them towards someone else.

The way their industry is structured, Windows PC manufacturers have no choice but to compete on price. Because they all run the same OS, they are all producing a basically generic product, and as in all generic products, competition is waged in pricing not features. So where is the profit generated in the WinPC market? The big monopoly profits are harvested by Microsoft of course who can set pretty much any price they want on Windows because the PC mfrs have no other alternative.

I don't see why Apple should be pissed at Intel pushing ultrabooks. Apple doesn't generate enough business for Intel, why would Intel not seek to generate other sales avenues? And AMD? AMD doesn't have the R&D muscle to keep up with Intel, and if Apple wants to be in the technology vanguard, it has to stick with Intel.

The way their industry is structured, Windows PC manufacturers have no choice but to compete on price. Because they all run the same OS, they are all producing a basically generic product, and as in all generic products, competition is waged in pricing not features. So where is the profit generated in the WinPC market? The big monopoly profits are harvested by Microsoft of course who can set pretty much any price they want on Windows because the PC mfrs have no other alternative.

That is patently untrue. Even when running the same OS, the companies could compete on:
- Quality
- Support
- Configurability
- Design (think ToughBook, for example)
- Features

Arguing that simply because they run the same OS that they are commodities is false.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tundraboy

I don't see why Apple should be pissed at Intel pushing ultrabooks. Apple doesn't generate enough business for Intel, why would Intel not seek to generate other sales avenues? And AMD? AMD doesn't have the R&D muscle to keep up with Intel, and if Apple wants to be in the technology vanguard, it has to stick with Intel.

You really don't see why Apple would be upset? They create a new product which does very well - and Intel subsidizes Apple's competitors so they can better compete. You really can't see the problem with that? Amazing.

Furthermore, your argument doesn't carry any weight. It is unlikely that Intel will sell many more chips by subsidizing Ultrabooks. I can't imagine very many people buying a system because it's $1100 instead of $1200. What the subsidy does is change the market share so fewer of those systems are from Apple, but won't actually increase the overall system sales significantly. So Intel's actions hurt Apple and don't have much benefit for Intel. Apple has every right to be upset.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

"Earlier this week, Digitimes reported that Intel is providing $100 "marketing subsidies" for ultrabook manufacturers in order to lower hardware prices, but Intel's Bill Calder told CNET today that "there is no $100 subsidy for ultrabooks," and that "the report from Digitimes was false.""

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

I thought at one point the PC makers--specially Dell and HP--had declined to tue point that they were rebadging laptops from Taiwan as their own. Many years ago, there was in fact a Dell laptop was had optical bays that were interchangeable with an HP model because they were actually the same laptop under the label. The PC ultrabook won't happen until Intel can manufacture a reference design and allow the HPs and Acers of the world to rebadge it.

Some of those people have no shame. Once again, Apple innovates, and then a bunch of other no talent people blatantly copy Apple's designs.

Who in their right mind would spend their precious money on some pathetic looking knockoff when they can get the original for a pretty cheap price? And to top it all off, they get the amazing and great OS X with it. Hell, if somebody wants to, they can even install Windows on their Mac, and have both OSes on their Mac, not that I would ever install Windows on any of my machines of course.

And those no talent PC makers are finding out that it's not that easy to deliver on the price points that they were initially hoping for. It turns out that the Macbook Air is priced to be very affordable. Would somebody rather buy an original painting by Picasso or a painting by some drunken bum sitting on a street corner who copied one of Picasso's paintings if they both were similarly priced?

If I ever saw anybody with one of those ultrabooks that looks like a Macbook Air ripoff, then I'd instantly know that that person has no taste, no style and no clue. I'd also question their overall intelligence and their decision making ability.

I'm not sure what you get from trolling the side of Apple here. The Lenovo is pictured there next to the Air in bad light. If you accept the necessary evil of google and view some of their designs, yes they're going thinner, but they are creating their own designs. Lenovo shares only a couple things with the Air. They have similar densities and keyboards. The chiclet keyboard may be a necessary step to create a product that thin. Apple wouldn't have a case in suing them even if the look and feel garbage actually held up in court. If you're going to troll something as a knockoff, look at one of the others. Regarding OSX, damn it I wish Apple would fix their graphics drivers . I'd also like to see 10 bit displayport options, but that may never happen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalclips

If Apple can sue over the design rip offs for iPad why can't they do the same for the MBA designs?

Look at how some of the look and feel suits played out. They didn't accomplish much. Anyway laptops in general share some common elements, but if you find a few photos of the Lenovo version, they're basically taking the same styling direction as the previous ideapads. The thinkpads look significantly different, but those have always been designed for rugged qualities. If you're only focused on what Apple is doing, everything else looks like a copy as you saw it first from Apple.

[...] However, J.P. Morgan is doubtful that Intel's efforts will take. Moskowitz characterized Apple's MacBook Air as a one-of-a-kind success story that was highly unlikely to transfer to ultrabooks. [...]

Bingo. Apple has transformed the MacBook Air from an overpriced, underpowered "executive laptop" niche special into their cheapest, best-selling consumer laptop. While maintaining healthy profit margins, radically increasing sales, and locking up consumer mindshare in the laptop space.

And how did Apple do that? By relentlessly advancing manufacturing technology, by relentlessly polishing the user experience, and by relentlessly upgrading their infrastructure. In other words, Apple has worked on critical areas that none of the Wintel laptop makers are willing to spend a dime on.

That's why Intel had to bribe them with $300 million to drag them along into the Ultrabook Initiative. And that's why the Ultrabook Initiative will ultimately fail. Because sprinkling money on the problem is only a short-term fix.

Don't forget that the trolls now say that it was always obvious and that was the way the market was always going, which translates to Apple has never really innovated anything.

And its not just one time.

A couple of years ago Shuttle and SFF was big. All copies of the most beautiful computer of all time: G4Cube.
---

I wish that some mole would report if Apple and Intel resigned their agreement.

2005-6 they signed a 5 year agreement. Intel designs motherboards for Apple + CPU. Many times Apple got pre released CPUs. Then the problems between Intel and Apple started. Intel got crazy and stopped third party motherboard chipset for i7 CPUs.

Apple demanded a Intel CPU without integrated Graphics. Intel refused. Apple was forced to use Core2duo way to long.

The Mac Pro is another example. Apple had thunderbold MacPros in 2009. These have not been released. Apple don't want to pay Intel almost 2000K for 2 CPUs. In 2006 the "same" CPU costed 330 dollar. In 2006 Intel had competition from AMD. Not today = why Intel are insane crazy. Just look at the 10 core Intel that costs 4400 dollars.

AMD is a non issue. They cant provide enough CPUs to Apple. That was the reason why Apple/AMDs negotiations broke down.

Intel is lazy. After 2006 AMD have had zero CPUs to compete with Intel = Intel have not cranked up the speeds. 2006 Intel's fastest CPU was a quad core 2.66ghz. Today its a hexa core about 3.5 ghz. Intel have doubled performance in 5 years.

ARM 2007 400mhz.
ARM Q1 2012 Quad core 2.5ghz. That is about 17 times performance gain. The quod core ARM 15 would beat intels 1.5-1.7ghz that Macbook Air uses today. The main difference is that Intel wants 400 + dollars for CPU/motherboard. ARM SoC is about 25-30 dollars.

Intel will be a niche manufacturer in a couple of years. X86 is biggest not because it was best of fastest. Only reason was that it was fast enough and cheap. ARM is now fast enough and cheap.

Bingo. Apple has transformed the MacBook Air from an overpriced, underpowered "executive laptop" niche special into their cheapest, best-selling consumer laptop. While maintaining healthy profit margins, radically increasing sales, and locking up consumer mindshare in the laptop space.

And how did Apple do that? By relentlessly advancing manufacturing technology, by relentlessly polishing the user experience, and by relentlessly upgrading their infrastructure. In other words, Apple has worked on critical areas that none of the Wintel laptop makers are willing to spend a dime on.

That's why Intel had to bribe them with $300 million to drag them along into the Ultrabook Initiative. And that's why the Ultrabook Initiative will ultimately fail. Because sprinkling money on the problem is only a short-term fix.

You can spin the original air as an executive laptop. I call it a beta test. It had way too many things wrong with it, which really didn't work at that price. It ran too hot on throttled versions of the cpus in use there, and the SSD version was extremely expensive. Of course part of that was due to the newness of the technology at that time. They really did turn that one around. I still don't agree that all ultrabooks are complete knockoffs. Yes Apple pioneered the form factor, but if you look at previous offerings from some of those manufacturers, many are using extensions of their own previous designs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shompa

And its not just one time.

A couple of years ago Shuttle and SFF was big. All copies of the most beautiful computer of all time: G4Cube.
---

I wish that some mole would report if Apple and Intel resigned their agreement.

2005-6 they signed a 5 year agreement. Intel designs motherboards for Apple + CPU. Many times Apple got pre released CPUs. Then the problems between Intel and Apple started. Intel got crazy and stopped third party motherboard chipset for i7 CPUs.

Apple demanded a Intel CPU without integrated Graphics. Intel refused. Apple was forced to use Core2duo way to long.

The Mac Pro is another example. Apple had thunderbold MacPros in 2009. These have not been released. Apple don't want to pay Intel almost 2000K for 2 CPUs. In 2006 the "same" CPU costed 330 dollar. In 2006 Intel had competition from AMD. Not today = why Intel are insane crazy. Just look at the 10 core Intel that costs 4400 dollars.

AMD is a non issue. They cant provide enough CPUs to Apple. That was the reason why Apple/AMDs negotiations broke down.

Intel is lazy. After 2006 AMD have had zero CPUs to compete with Intel = Intel have not cranked up the speeds. 2006 Intel's fastest CPU was a quad core 2.66ghz. Today its a hexa core about 3.5 ghz. Intel have doubled performance in 5 years.

ARM 2007 400mhz.
ARM Q1 2012 Quad core 2.5ghz. That is about 17 times performance gain. The quod core ARM 15 would beat intels 1.5-1.7ghz that Macbook Air uses today. The main difference is that Intel wants 400 + dollars for CPU/motherboard. ARM SoC is about 25-30 dollars.

Intel will be a niche manufacturer in a couple of years. X86 is biggest not because it was best of fastest. Only reason was that it was fast enough and cheap. ARM is now fast enough and cheap.

Okay this is just completely wrong. You may not like it, but you're wrong on practically every detail in your post. Clock speed isn't the sole determining factor in speed. You can't compare clock speeds across different architectures. The quad core ARM can't touch the Air cpu. Where are you getting your information? Guess what, it's significantly slower than even a Core2 chip. Attempt to scale it upward toward this kind of performance and the incentive on power and longer battery life evaporates. Next thing is that they didn't have a five year agreement. Apple switched logic board manufacturers across machines before that period was up. If a contract was in place for that full duration, this would not have happened. If you're going to post up such a long rant, at least try to get some of your information right. Also the fast enough argument has been stated a billion times over the past decade. When a computer exists that can process text in real time, people start to say fast enough. It happens, but beyond that you're either trolling or completely ignorant.

The way their industry is structured, Windows PC manufacturers have no choice but to compete on price. Because they all run the same OS, they are all producing a basically generic product, and as in all generic products, competition is waged in pricing not features. So where is the profit generated in the WinPC market? The big monopoly profits are harvested by Microsoft of course who can set pretty much any price they want on Windows because the PC mfrs have no other alternative.

I don't see why Apple should be pissed at Intel pushing ultrabooks. Apple doesn't generate enough business for Intel, why would Intel not seek to generate other sales avenues? And AMD? AMD doesn't have the R&D muscle to keep up with Intel, and if Apple wants to be in the technology vanguard, it has to stick with Intel.

APU... graphics accelerating.... This is where AMD is and will keep on destroying Intel.

Intel cannot make integrated graphics that even come close to AMD's. much less drivers (which does not matter that much with Apple i think).

If trinity is right, than they could swap out the ULV cpu's in MBA's today, add in the trinity quad core APU's and use graphics acceleration to make it go a lot faster.

P.S. Apple should just buy AMD, cheaper than ARM, and going for graphics acceleration...

PC means personal computer.

i have processing issues, mostly trying to get my ideas into speech and text.

APU... graphics accelerating.... This is where AMD is and will keep on destroying Intel.

Intel cannot make integrated graphics that even come close to AMD's. much less drivers (which does not matter that much with Apple i think).

I think we may want to wait and see what Intel does with the 4000HD graphics in the Ivy Bridge processors, if the buzz is even halfway true, it will handily outperform anything AMD has out there.

I think AMD is only ever going to truly be able to compete with Intel on price. Intel has so much more money and resources than AMD, that they are almost always going to be leaps and bounds ahead as far as technology.

I'd like to see where Apple ranks in profits for the PC industry and for unit marketshare over $1000. I bet it's higher than the previous measure. Those netbooks really killed the PC market not only in their ability to turn a profit but also consumer faith in those other PC vendors.

Very good points. The large box makers were all too concerned with marketshare, while Apple was more concerned with profit per unit sold. And while the generic Windows based producers were trying to beat each other on price, to capture more share (netbooks), Apple sold "the experience". Rather than devaluing the product, and making it just another utilitarian appliance, Apple tries to give, at least the impression, that what you are purchasing is something more than just a generic box with a monitor attached.

There will always be a market for cheap, utilitarian devices... especially in developing nations. But even there, as people move up the food chain, they typically want to disassociate themselves from Chevrolets and get a Mercedes. And as these former netbook makers are finding, once you have a rep for making cheap crap, it's not so easy to move into a premium space.

Considering Apple's level of success at its current marketshare, it doesn't have to get to 20% to do well. Moving from 1.5 to 3 and then 3 to 6 are 100% gains. So as a shareholder (and new, happy iMac owner), I'm extremely pleased with the progress that Apple has made since the bad old days of the early-mid 90's. I think the company learned from that experience and will NOT repeat it.

BTW, I watched my doctor struggle with his Windows 7 Dell today. It was quite sad. Maybe he'll take the small fortune I'll be paying him and buy an iMac.